Tomorrow is Halloween. While this holiday used to be the scary highlight of the year, 2020 blew that out of the water early. But we will have a “”Blue Moon”” to make it a little more special. Today is also National Candy Corn Day, a nicely timed PR stunt. If you’re wondering, here’s, “”The Most Popular Halloween Candy in Every State.””
Cisco news. Lots of news from Cisco’s Partner Summit Digital, including new partner program enhancements implemented over the next 12-18 months. Nearly a dozen programs will meld into one and offer new ways for partners to better differentiate their business and increase profitability.
Big news as well for public and private clouds to simplify IT operations across environments. Look up Cisco Intersight, Nexus Dashboard (pictured), and Identity Services Engine. The first will be available later this year, and the others will be out in the first half of 2021.
Cisco Security has their goodies, too. Revved up Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Zero Trust, and Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) will provide a 95% reduction in time to detect threats, according to Cisco. Even better, an 85% reduction in time to remediate. Your “”favorite user”” won’t even have time to complain before the problem is fixed.
AppDynamics (part of Cisco) released some new capabilities to help build cloud native applications. They include Full Stack Observability Platform, Cloud Data Collector, Cloud Native Visualization, and Intelligent Application Resourcing and Cost Optimization.
More news from the big dogs. AMD will plop down $35 billion in stock to acquire Xilinx, makers of high-performance FPGAs, “”Adaptive SoCs,”” accelerator and SmartNIC solutions, and more. AMD says these products, along with their own CPUs and GPUs, will immediately improve their coverage from the data center to the cloud to the edge and on to endpoint devices.
Now rolling out to general availability, the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare promises to enhance patient engagement, empower health team collaboration, and improve insights. Oh yeah, better compliance and security as well.
Everyone needs more screen real estate, right? Microsoft Teams displays combine productivity, collaboration, and artificial intelligence into a small external screen that puts your Team tools in one place for easy access. Cortana’s enhanced AI and voice interface runs through these adjunct screens, adding hands-free controls. The Teams displays-compatible Lenovo ThinkSmart View (pictured left) can be ordered now, and a similar product from Yealink (pictured right) will be available soon.
To improve its AI tools, Intel will acquire SigOpt, maker of a platform for optimizing AI software models at scale. Terms were not disclosed, but the deal should close this quarter.
Sorry to sound like a bad 1960s psychedelic song, but sometimes your applications need to be alone in their togetherness. You know, truly isolated cloud instances. Amazon offers flower power, er, AWS Nitro Enclaves, that let you carve out an isolated environment on any EC2 instance powered by the Nitro system.
Security news. When work environments changed from open plans to digitally remote, security concerns changed. Changing with them is the Citrix Ready Workspace Security Program. The expanded offering will include Zero Trust solutions and work with the Google Cloud and a variety of leading security vendors.
Speaking of remote security, the new FortiGate 2600F firewall (pictured), from Fortinet, is designed to reduce cost and complexity by replacing multiple point products. Protect all your edge and remote workers as well as provide highspeed cloud on-ramps with the horsepower to support large remote workforces.
Hello to McAfee MVISION XDR, a proactive, data-aware and open extended detection and response platform. The cloud-based system provides advanced threat management across the attack lifecycle. Available today with MVISION EDR and additional experiences available to early access customers in Q1. For a SASE solution, check out the new features in MVISION Unified Cloud Edge that protect against phishing and ransomware.
The newly-turbocharged Exabeam Security Management Platform enables you to detect improper cloud storage access and prevent sensitive data from flying away. Takes data from Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob, and Google Cloud Platform Cloud Storage buckets to separate good from bad behavior.
Netskope rolled out Netskope Advanced Analytics, an interactive analytics service, to report on cloud and web use. Get dynamic, real-time views of cloud risk exposure for third party apps, users, and data.
Also revved up, The Claroty Platform boosts its operation technology security to offer remote incident management that covers the entire incident lifecycle. Security Remote Access 3.1 and Continuous Threat Detection 4.2 have arrived as well.
In a real “”put your money where your mouth is”” move, the Cybereason Breach Protection Warranty provides up to $1 million in coverage in the event of a breach. Includes zero-day, malware, and ransomware attacks.
The AttackIQ Security Optimization Platform now integrates with the Microsoft Azure Sentinel SIEM. In fact, Microsoft was a founding member of AttackIQ’s Preactive Security Exchange.
Other product news. The new TP-Link Omada SDN, an expansion of the Omada business product line, simplifies network management with integration across gateways, controllers, PoE, and smart switches, as well as Wi-Fi routers and access points.
Just because workers toil away in home offices or smaller offices doesn’t mean they can’t have big images when needed. If that’s your clients, check out the new portable Epson VS260 3LCD Projector (pictured). XGA resolution and 3,300 lumens of bright white and full color.
Just because a laptop is your weapon of choice doesn’t mean you can’t have some extra screen real estate. Now it’s even easier with the ViewSonic VG2756-2K and VG2756-4K docking monitors, which provide docking station functionality over a single USB-C connection. 2K and 4K resolution packed into 27-inch screens.
Gamer alert: ASUS used the new AMD Radeon RX 6000 GPU in a new lineup of ROG Strix and TUF Gaming graphics cards. Innovative air and liquid cooling keep the games going.
Call your friends! The NetFortis Comm-unity UCaaS platform now integrates with Microsoft Teams to bring calling features to Microsoft 365. Get features added to the standard Teams calling plans like call flows and ring groups and IP desktop phones.
If you must suffer through interminable video meetings, they should at least be easy to setup. The latest RingCentral Video innovations focus on two areas: enhanced security and seamless experience across any device.
Sign up more customers with the new Universal Licensing for Arcserve Unified Data Protection. Shift spending to OPEX with the subscription model.
FileCloud Aurora 20.2 introduces a re-imagination of FileCloud’s browser, mobile, and sync clients. The upgrade aims to provide a clean interface and fluid file-sharing experience.
Interested in accelerating enterprise cloud infrastructure automation? Maybe the new OneFuse 1.1 from CloudBolt Software can help. It also helps security and policy enforcement across hybrid clouds.
Eliminate data silos with the new Data Mobility Suite from StorCentric. Vendor-agnostic file migration, replication, and synchronization. Software-defined NMVe will soon enter the picture thanks to StorCentric’s acquisition of Violin Systems.
Non-product vendor news. SentinelOne welcomes Ken Marks as vice president of worldwide channels.
Hello to the new head of channel sales, Kimber Garrett (pictured), over at Axis Security.
If you do government business, it might be nice to know that Tech Data sub DLT Solutions has been awarded the ITES-SW2 contract. Helps partners supply product to the U.S. Army and other federal agencies.
The hybrid cloud visibility player Gigamon signed up with Ingram Micro to distribute to channel partners across the U.S.
The IGEL OS folks signed with Arrow Electronics to distribute its full portfolio of products.
The Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Data Center product will be deployed by EdgePresence and distributed by Accu-Tech to simplify deployment.
ClearBlade has signed on to add its edge IoT asset monitoring solution to IBM Edge Application Manager.
Speaking of alliances, security vendor Dark Cubed and Solutionz, a security specialist for audio-visual and unified communications solutions, to provide automated threat detection and blocking to SMBs.
Qualified customers can now get a 30-day trial of the new Scale Computing HE150 software and hardware all-flash appliance.
This week’s stats ticker:
SonicWall Capture Labs released third-quarter threat intelligence gathered by the company’s more than 1 million global security sensors. Year to date (through September) highlights include aggressive growth in ransomware and a rise in IoT attacks. However, malware is down 39%, the third straight quarter of decline. Unfortunately, that was matched by a 40% global surge in ransomware attacks (199.7 million). The 3.5 trillion intrusion attempts represent a 19% rise. A massive spike in ransomware in September showed 145.2 million hits in the U.S. alone. Nearly a third of attacks in September were using the Ryuk ransomware. IoT malware attacks are up 30% to 32.4 million worldwide.
A new survey report from Visual Objects found that 34% of full-time employees admitted to not practicing basic cybersecurity protocols during the coronavirus pandemic. Graybeards are saying, “”only a third?”” Two thirds (66%) took work devices home for the pandemic. 35% of employees are required to use a secure Wi-Fi network for work, making that more used than VPNs (31%), two-factor authentication (31%) and phishing training (32%). Since phishing scams are the current leading avenue for attack worldwide, perhaps 32% is a bit low. 500 full-time employees across the U.S. were surveyed for this report.
One Identity commissioned Dimensional Research to survey 1,216 IT professionals in mid to large organizations from around the world. Fun detail? 99% said their org moved to remote work because of COVID-19 but only a third described the transition as “”smooth.”” 62% say cloud infrastructure is more important now than 12 months ago. In fact, the cloud has moved front and center in the new working reality. Only 45% admit they are prepared for the IT changes necessary for employees to move back to the office. Half are placing a higher priority on access request technologies, and identity management activities became more important to at least 50% of those surveyed.
When Halloween spirit gets a little too creative. Two fun Texas Halloween stories for you, because everything’s bigger in Texas, including bizarre decorations.
In Dallas, local artist Steven Novak created a Halloween display that could be straight from the movie Halloween with machetes in heads, chainsaws through the back, and a bag of body parts. In an homage (we imagine) to cartoons, a safe crushed the head of one poor mannequin, splashing blood everywhere. We assume it’s an Acme safe, ordered by the Coyote to crush the Roadrunner, but the poor mannequin got it instead. However, viewers aren’t sure the bodies and partial bodies are in fact fake and keep calling the police.
In Richmond, outside Houston, Angela Nava had a little too much fun with her skeletons. Wearing neon-colored wigs, the skeletons are busy spinning on stripper poles. Skeletons in 70s style porn mustaches are watching, getting bony lap dances, and holding beer mugs while R&B plays. The police aren’t involved, but her local HOA got upset about the “”inappropriate”” and “”offensively positioned”” decorations. Every night, Angela changes positions of the yard-based adult club participants. And that HOA letter? She was given 30 days to comply, so the party goes through the holiday with room to spare.
